New consoles from Sony and Microsoft will be released in 2020

Microsoft in the face of the head of the gaming division Phil Spencer (Phil Spencer) said bluntly during E3 2018, which is working on the next-gen Xbox (let’s call the console for simplicity, the Xbox Next). When we can expect the release of this gaming platform on the market? This was recently told by a reputable blogger Paul Thurrot (Paul Thurrott), citing its sources.

According to him, the next-generation Xbox is code name Scarlett, and Microsoft plans to release it in 2020. While Microsoft describes Scarlett in internal documents as a collection of devices, so can get several products. The date may seem relatively close, because Xbox One X was released only last year, but Microsoft supposedly set up firmly and going to shake the industry.

Mr. Thurrot suggests that the Next Xbox will be fully compatible with all games available today, but it will offer opportunities and services next generation (like streaming games). Considering how much Microsoft spends on backward compatibility today, it is a logical assumption. In addition, surely the Xbox Next will be still based on the x86 architecture.

Sony, in turn, says nothing about their game system next generation (let’s call it the PlayStation 5), but rumors of its development appeared long ago, so the launch of the device should also be in the offing. Last message touch used by the Japanese core components and continue a fruitful cooperation with AMD.

Resource Forbes, citing anonymous industry sources, said that the PS5 will use the graphics accelerator architecture of AMD Navi, supplemented by the CPU on the basis of Zen+ (strangely, not Zen 2). However, more detailed information is not available, so it is not clear whether it is still on a powerful single chip system by analogy with the PS4 and PS4 Pro (it saves), or Sony decided to use the individual components CPU and GPU Ryzen Navi for maximum performance.

Graphics architecture AMD Navi will be made subject to the 7-nm technological standards, and, according to sources, this accelerator is the result of close collaboration with AMD to Sony. Most of the work on a new architecture was allegedly conducted under the leadership of Raja Koduri (Raja Koduri), who led Radeon Technologies Group and recently left AMD to work for Intel.

It is argued that the collaboration with Sony was carried out at the expense of work on Radeon RX Vega and other current projects AMD: Mr. Koduri was forced against his will to transfer up to 2/3 of the engineering team exclusively for the Navi. Because of this, supposedly the Manager was very unhappy with the amount of resources and engineering hours spent on Board accelerators RX Vega, and products like Frontier Edition turned out worse than expected.

Citing sources, Forbes also reports that the version of the Navi for desktops will be primarily focused on the mass market and will not compete with the expensive and high-class accelerators NVIDIA GeForce. This is logical, given the console roots of the Navi, but it does not mean that after the mass products will come and more powerful solutions on the same architecture.

It is curious that, according to Forbes, the accelerator Navi did not mention in connection with Microsoft Scarlett. Journalists suggest that Xbox Next will not use a Navi or a accelerator created by AMD and Microsoft on the basis of the Vega. In General, all the informants talk about Navi was carried out in the past tense, as if the work on the accelerator has been completed — maybe PS5 will come out before the Xbox Next, by analogy with the PS4 and Xbox One Pro X?